rights

THE GOVERNMENT’S REVOLT

The Dangers of Capital Thought in a New Millennium

By James K. Galloway

The United States Government is clamping down on personal freedoms through some kind of overarching groupthink injection pattern across favorable corporate media platforms and into the collective unconsciousness. It scares me in ways their extroverted propaganda campaign of fear can’t touch; the FOX News kind of shit, the decoys for what mind games are really at play. But I study it. The machine, that is. I prod at it, testing its features, habits, strengths and weaknesses, like those of an animal. Of ferocity and controlled power, of the naked Lady Liberty flexing her leg muscles like a gazelle as she pushes back against pressure from the front. When I write about the government, I feel as if I am both the hunter and the hunted.

I don’t trust governments or leaders. Too many people in this world suffer atrocities at the hands of governments and organized combat. We aren’t taught the whole truth in grade school, but nearly everyone is taught that people suffered after one man took dictatorial control of the German government in the 1930s and 40s. The mass media is panicking like it’s the Fifties and I feel like I should have been born in the Sixties. We’re plodding through an economy worse than the Seventies while Senior Executives party like it’s the Eighties. And I wish it was still the Nineties.

I learned how to write throughout the Nineties, taking notes from Ren ‘n Stimpy, Mad Magazine, and my mom’s old copies of Newsweek. Between 2000 and 2010, I learned that writing is my form and my place in the world. And now, in this foul year of our Lord, Twenty Eleven, I have learned without much doubt that I will be forced to use it to the best of my abilities to defend the civil rights of Americans, and indeed of all people across all lands, for they are compromised at every corner, shucked at every boundary, and permanently eroded with every lying breath of every justifiable abuse of the authorities granted to the people we pay to protect us – but at the behest, and with the permission of, our corporate overseers – are happy to chip away at the Constitution in exchange for a bit of job security, one nightstick blow to the head at a time.

Also in the Nineties, we were not in a “State of Emergency” like we are now, like Nazi Germany. The State of Emergency has been renewed every year since September 11, 2001, usurping checks and balances, giving the Head of State more control than we elected him into. Maybe Obama hasn’t used these powers, or abused them, and maybe he has. All we know for sure is that he renewed our State of Emergency, based on terrorist attacks that took place within a few hours almost ten years ago, and a handful of failed plots since then.

Since 1967, Egypt has been in a State of Emergency.

Yet, the people here do nothing. They look on as their neighbors are violated, as their friends and family are surveyed and arrested for conspiracy to commit capital thought. The few with the balls to stand in the way of injustice merely get their hands closed in the door jam. So darkness falls on those, too, who try to help, whose intentions are pure, lives totally organic, natural and human. The darkness eventually closes in on us all, when there are no more peace-loving reasonable-heads left between you and rubber bullets, riot batons, mace and tasers. We must all taste the failure of the 1960s and the failure of goodness to halt the war machine as it slowly diminished the joy of being alive. As our love for life is quietly destroyed off-air. Offline. Out of sight, and out of mind.

In the absence of backlash, society is obviously, painfully, wholly saturated with reality TV, smart phones and text messenger monsters, a combination ripe for the killing of dull beasts who don’t even know they’re being led to the slaughter. Moo, bay, get down on all fours or squirm on your back like a worm – come what may, your day is today. Caw, freak out and neigh. Ironically, you’ll find communication devices failed us, because in this moment you’ll realize what it truly means to scream out, and that you’ve forgotten how to speak out, or even talk loud.

How many girls must I call before they answer the phone instead of waiting for it to stop ringing only to text me right back? Try to shoot out a sext to your boyfriend fighting in Afghanistan about how happy you are to be an American, so righteous, and proud. So Free.

The Moment of Truth

Just as I contemplated the thought of black military boots stamping the pretty face of a military wife into hamburger meat, there were five hard knocks at the door. I went to the window to see what’s up. I was stunned to find two police officers standing on my front porch, hands at their pistols. I could see their guns were still holstered but against their thumbs, the clasps were already unbuttoned.

No time to do much else, I thought, but answer the door as they were already yelling out my name and threatening to come in. Saying they can hear me moving and to prepare to have my door kicked in. I answer the pounding, tying my robe as quickly as possible but still accidentally giving them a rare glimpse of my full-frontal nudity. I can tell it makes them uncomfortable but maybe aroused and who knows? Closet fags, maybe? At this point, I can only hope.

Without explanation they demanded to search my apartment. I, in turn, demanded a search warrant.

“Your neighbors called, complaining about loud music and said they heard a woman scream. Do you guys smell marijuana?” he asked the other meatheads. They looked at him without saying anything, and then turned back to me. Their eyes went cold and automatic, looking through me and not at me, into my dwelling, prowling for visual probable cause. Without hesitation, the taller man forced my door open while the other two puffed out their chests and brushed right on past me, making a beeline for my coffee table where a bag of weed sat between two magazines, one Mad and one Adbusters, with a pack of rolling papers on top.

“James Galloway, you’re under arrest for possession and distribution of marijuana.”

Knowing anything I said would likely be used against me, I stood silently as they handcuffed me and searched through everything I owned. They methodically began to make a pile of bongs, pipes, empty baggies of seeds and even my ashtray of stems on the coffee table. One bald-headed fuck picked up a picture of the lady I once thought that I loved, a picture of her sitting on the hood of my truck, hands tucked in her legs, black hair in a knot, cute eyes and crows feet, looking so happy, pure, so hot and sexy in that black bikini and supple with the dark green shine of late summer in her soul; and he looked at me, then back down at her. Looked back at me, and put it in his pocket.

As I watched the remarkable scene, memories flooded in, of those cool times I got to chill out and listen to Jimi Hendrix wail on the guitar, as my friends played harmonica to it, playing the banjo and laughing, as videogames and laptops and the weed went around. Times of joy and freedom of the mind, body and soul. Freedom to be who we were, doing what we do, writing, joking, tripping out and loving the whole experience.

I remembered speeches by famous people whose names I forgot, how they sold people the idea of marijuana legalization – even if the whole country is for it, it still needs to be sold. Even if we’re all buying it, there’s a pitchman still pushing it. Look over there, at the man with a gavel who still says no because he’s got a gun to his back and his family’s at risk and his phone has been tapped by Pharmaceutical bastards who use Mafia tactics and make sure the President laughs when you ask him, “So can we legalize it yet?” And I looked again at the pigs, servants of the alcohol industry and corporate America as a whole. I pled guilty on the spot of having spent my money on weed instead of plastic shit from Wal-Mart. And I put out my hands, so they could cuff me, so I could rot.

I stared into the grass of my front yard, in front of my white brick apartment building, studying closely a patch of dirt and a select few grass blades. It was so small and so peaceful. Lawless and pure. Too tiny to delegate, too insignificant to police. I thought, “Mom, what is this? I need you here now.”

From the all-telling beyond non-existence of Death, she spoke to my inner subconsciousness. Take pity on them. Do not fear the NSA Supercomputer, she said. It can see you, hear you, it might even one day sense you. But it can not know you. Only you, and your lover can know James Galloway. And maybe no one, even perhaps only you, ever will.